GNU/Linux and Free Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 03, 2025

GNU/Linux

• Desktop Environments (DE)/Window Managers (WM)

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GNOME ☛ Christian Hergert: Integrating Libdex and GAsyncResult

      Previously.

      Historically if you wanted to do asynchronous work in GObject-based applications you would use GAsyncReadyCallback and GAsyncResult.

      There are two ways to integrate with this form of asynchronous API.

      In one direction, you can consume this historical API and provide the result as a DexFuture. In the other direction, you can provide this API in your application or library but implement it behind the scenes with DexFuture.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Barry Kauler ☛ Finally got overlay filesystem to work

    There has been a long history of reporting failure with overlayfs [...]

  • SUSE/OpenSUSE

    • OpenSUSE ☛ Tumbleweed Monthly Update - August 2025

      Major updates included glibc 2.42 with support for new C standards, VirtualBox 7.2.0 and Bash 5.3.3, which improves script handling and adds new built-ins. KDE Gear 25.08.0 also landed to enhance applications for travel, file management, and encrypted communication.

• Free, Libre, and Open Source Software

  • Education

    • Rlang ☛ Effective and useful feature engineering workshop

      Feature engineering is one of the fundamental part of the modeling pipeline that is often overlooked to great dismay. This workshop will go over a number of practical examples, going over the most common problems that feature engineering solves. Including dealing with numeric predictors, time predictors, and categorical predictors. A practical component is included, which will use the R package {recipes} and its extension packages.

    • Nico Cartron ☛ Jokes in Michael W Lucas' tech books

      One thing that struck me though, is the very fun touches that MWL adds - I don't think I've laughed when reading any other tech book.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • Alex Russell ☛ Apple's Assault on Standards

      Internet standards bodies assumed the properties of open operating systems and low-cost replacement of software to such an extent that their founding documents scarcely bother to mention them.4 Only later did statements of shared values see fit to make the subtext clear.

      And it has worked. Internet standards have facilitated interoperability that has blunted lock-in, outsized pricing power, and monopolistic abuses. This role is the entire point of standards at a societal level, and the primary reason competition law carves out space for competitors to collaborate to develop standards.5

      But standardisation is not purely an economic project. Standards attenuate the power of firms that might seek to arrogate code's privileges. Functional interoperability enables competition, and in so doing, reallocates power to users. Interoperability, and the standards that ensure it, are therefore at least partially a political project; one that aligns with the values of open societies: [...]